Thursday, July 18, 2013

LC's Birthday and Catching Up Some

Hello there. How's life treating you?

My sweet friend brought me these flowers the other day. Aren't they happy? Once while passing the island in our kitchen, I noticed the combination of the orange and blue bowls with their produce inside. Pleased my eye and heart, so I started snapping pictures...

Sometimes getting the right angle means bare feet on countertops...or squatting in a field...or...whatever it takes!

She asked for fruit salad on her birthday. One of her sisters dropped this watermelon the day we bought it, hence the crack. Ever artistic and resourceful, EG and LC changed the cracked melon into a silly face, just like that. They're so funny!

So, our sweet LC is now a big NINE years old! She's our Independence Day baby! She was due in late June. I'd gone past dates with my first two, and assumed number 3 would be the same. I hoped that if she came after her due date, it would be on July 4. So, you know I was happy when those contractions started early evening on July 3!

Each of my labors has been different. I've gone natural with 3 (ie, no epidural), and I've begged for the epidural with the other 3. For whatever reason, I was especially nervous and just not feeling up to the natural experience (though it was what I'd planned to do) with LC. Hook me up! They did, and I delivered her quite painlessly at almost 2am, July 4, 2004.

She was my gazer. I remember dressing her up, then laying her on the hospital bed so that I could look at her. And she just looked back, so peacefully. Sweet memory.

CA went all out in the crafty department, making presents for LC. The whole Tinkertoy box was full of cut-outs and drawings and little projects CA created for LC's birthday gifts. And oh, look, there's Baby H!

For a while, CJ (in her jammies) sat there beside LC, quite absorbed in the gift-opening. And hey, there's H again - he's pretty much everywhere, all the time...

He got a patriotic tattoo, just like everyone else. What a handsome boy!

Ooooh, look! A strap! Lemme have that, mom!

She asked for strawberry icebox pie. No one complained.

Happy Birthday, Sweet LC!
*
After LC's birthday, BB took the children on a road trip Back Home, and left me home alone. The idea was to work on tying up 1,000,000 loose ends (or so it felt like) that have accumulated in our lives over the past couple of years. I made lists and got to work when they left. There was cleaning. There were errands. Some letter writing. Oh my, I really lost track of all I did, because I stayed so busy. My biggest, most daunting self-given challenge was to try to make our living room more homey. I'm not a decorator. I do not enjoy the process and feel anxious and overwhelmed thinking of trying to decorate a space - especially a large-ish open space like our main living area.

Prayed a lot. Thought a lot. Fought anxiety a lot. And it's done. I'm happy with it and thankful that BB gave me the amazing privilege of the time alone that week, as well as freedom to snap up a few this-and-that's to warm up the look of the living room.

Each of the girls painted a beautiful rendition of Van Gogh's Starry Night last year. I finally framed them (sort of - in my quickie, unprofessional way) and they were the starting point for ideas about color and such in the room.

Once we were all back together as a family, we unpacked everyone, washed some laundry, and repacked so that we could go camping. We rented two tiny cabins (the kind with no plumbing, but with A/C, halleluia). It was nice to spend the three nights together after the time apart. The temps were way hot, which just meant we lived in slow motion and took naps. Nothing to complain about there. The children enjoyed lots of independence, freedom, exploring, and some boredom. Nothing wrong with that, either!

Seems like there's a lot to catch up on here. I've rarely been able to blog at the speed of life...

I've had a deep thought recently (just one, haha!). When I look at the past three years with all their chaos and growing pains and crises and therapy and so on, it occurred to me that God has used these events to turn my heart and my world upside down. This has not been a comfortable thing. And I realized with great certainty that nothing will ever be the same. The unique combination of adoption, two babies fairly close in age, one of whom came with drama, my own weakness and sinfulness...and other factors have changed everything. God's used all this to change me. Enormously. And also to help me understand who He made me to be. It's a little disorienting sometimes, but in a good way.

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Tiny Bio

I'm Beth. Today I'm 41. Jesus loves me, this I know. I love running and coffee and flowers and quiet space. BB is my best friend & husband these 18 years. We're still in awe over how many kids we have - 8 unique, full of life people we call ours. We're all still trying to figure out large family life together. It's messy. Really messy. And it's beautiful and rich, draining and maddening, and I'm in this space to think out loud about it all.

AH - 18EG - 17MK - 15LC - 13CA - 10CJ - 7

BH - 5

MES - 3

The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, Who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John 1:14